The Invitation/ Perfected/ Brideship and It's Fruits

By Prayer, By Separation From World: A New Testament Spiritual Priest

Mark 4:26-29 December 28, 2015

If the Gifts of the Spirit, the Word of Truth and the Body of Christ are the tools used in the employ of the Master Gardener to bring forth fruit in the Vine, what shall we say about the techniques which He employs in bringing about the growth of fruit in His ‘branches’?

Two primary rules of cultivation employed in the spirit by God are first, prayer, and then separation. Prayer is the means in which we can become sanctified, or separated. Being separated from the world and sin is the only path to true holiness and the only setting in which good fruit can flourish and become a pleasant nutrient in God’s Holy Kingdom. That which is separated unto God, or sanctified, is that thing which is first separated from sin and returned back to God, its creator and rightful owner. This separation from sin and a subsequent attachment to God is the pure definition of holiness. That which has been separated out so that it can be separated exclusively to God. Just as the plant must be put in the right place to flourish, so prayer puts the Christian in the right place to have the fruits come forth. And, just as the plant must be isolated from other contending elements like weeds, pestilence, and bugs that would take desperately needed nutrients away, so the believer who desires to bring fruits to maturity must be isolated from the injurious things of the world.

It is in these two states, prayer, and separation from the world, that the methods of spiritual cultivation and gardening are able to have an effect. We are the plants, God is the gardener. As every gardener has a method and applies knowledge and skill in utilizing his specialized tools; the Spirit knows how and when to use each instrument and for what end it is designed. He knows where to place the plants, whether in the shade, the direct sunlight, or along a fence. He knows what kind of soil is needed, sandy or rich. He understands how much room a plant requires between rows, what kind of pestilence it may be subject to, when and how heavily to water it, how to prune and fertilize it, and when the fruit is ready for harvest, and when it is in a dormant state. The farmer applies his tools to a method of cultivation, and so it is with God, our Father in the Spirit, who is the Great Gardener.

Jesus told a parable about God The Gardener and the cultivation process that takes place in the kingdom of God. “He spake also this parable; A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none. Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground? And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: And if it bear fruit, well: and if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.” Luke 13:6-9

The “certain man” at the opening of the parable is God who has planted, by the power of His Word, a soul in His vineyard. He has prepared the soil and laid the groundwork for a person to be reborn and thrive in the spirit. And after a while, He comes to see His plant has realized its reason for existence: namely, that it has brought forth fruit for the Master’s use. When He finds no fruit he tells the vinedresser, which can be understood to be Christ and His body, to cut it down and get rid of it. “Why does it cumber the ground”, he says with a certain tone of disgust and frustration. All it is doing is taking up space, sucking up water, and requiring precious resources spent on it in vain. The fig tree in this parable is any individual person of the commonwealth of God. As we are warned in the words of the Last Supper, if we do not bear fruit we shall be cast away and burnt like any other useless flotsam and jetsam. The reborn-soul is being spoken to by God and has been planted in the kingdom by God Himself, but He will not put up with a fruitless, disobedient, and evil servant forever. God will not strive with man forever.

Cultivation Begins With Prayer
In His mercy, the Father allows for repeated attempts at cultivating the fruits in one of His precious “branches” to be made. The cultivation process begins with prayer. The vinedressers (the body of Christ) have asked God to give the fruitless tree some more time. God is asked for some favor. This represents prayer in this parable. It is a prayer request of hope and patience. Christ and His body beseech the Father to let some more cultivation take place on this soul before it is uprooted and cast away. An unfruitful and impossible situation can be turned around by spiritual cultivation. First, a plea of hope, a petition of mercy is granted by The Great Gardener, at the request of the body. Prayer, making the request for the chance that fruits may grow, by and for ourselves, or for others in the body of Christ, is the first and most important step in the cultivation of the fruits. Cultivation of the fruits, then, is mounted on faith and established by prayer. Without prayer and faith in God the fruits cannot even begin to grow. We have to trust God that the fruits will grow.

“And he said, so is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground;
and should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how.
For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.
But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come.” Mark 4:26-29

Key to our understanding here is the phrase, we knoweth not how. For the growth of the spiritual fruits are so foreign to our natural impulses and the instincts of our carnal nature that we cannot naturally believe that they will grow in us. We cannot, by our own will power, talent, righteousness or discipline make spiritual fruits grow in us. But it is by faith, through prayer and belief in the power of Christ and His shed blood that the Divine attributes of the fruits of the Spirit can actually take root in us and come to full fruition. Prayer is the first evidence with God of our faith in Him for the growth of the fruits. It sets all further cultivation in motion. We must ask God for the fruits to grow in us and expect that He will see to it, by His loving care, that they will grow in us and expect that He will see to it, by His loving care that they will grow in us. As a plant reaching out of the shade desperately climbing to life-giving sunlight, we must desire through prayer that the sunlight of Christ will shine so brightly on us and nourish us that the fruits will begin to bud, blossom and ripen within us and crown our whole being to the glory of God.

Prayer is the first method and requisite for the growth of the fruits in a believer. That is the beginning of the cultivation of fruit. As placement of a plant in the right spot and soil condition is key to its health and fruitfulness, so prayer is key to the growth of spiritual fruit. Prayer opens the heavens and the skies and lets the light of growth shine directly on us. As the vinedresser did, we must ask in faith, counting on the Master’s mercy, so we can be tended to and our fruits can grow to maturity.

SEPARATION FROM THE WORLD IS A NECESSITY
Second to prayer in the cultivation of the fruits is the separation, or isolation, of the plant. (See LeRoy Gardenier’s article (The Rechabites: A Separated People.) The vinedresser, often in the person of members of the body of Christ, praying in the name of Jesus for the fruitless person, have asked for opportunity to apply spiritual methods of cultivation. Just as the vinedresser in the parable, we must beseech the Father to keep the plant rooted so that efforts in the spirit can be made to coax the plant into bringing forth fruit.

The notion of separation is signified in the action of the dresser to “dig around” the tree. A person must have the soil of his heart turned over by the Spirit of God and through the preaching and receiving of the Word in his soul. Faith to believe God’s Word so that action upon it can result is a process that requires digging and turning. As with any plant, the weeds must be removed so precious nutrients are not competed for and depleted by idolatry or any other form of spiritual competition. Water (the Word) that life-giving fluid must reach to the tap-root so life can be sustained in every single cell of our being. We do not want any good part of us to wither and die. The plant must get the necessary sunlight so it can convert elements of the water and nutrients of the soil into food and energy. For these things to take place the plant must stand alone in a proper setting so it can be free to get what it needs. Spiritual Man is no different. If the fruits are to grow we must be segregated. Come out and be ye separate and touch not the unclean thing, is the Bible’s direct plea. We must drink up the water of God’s Word and bask in the life-giving light of Jesus Christ and none other. But our segregation is not only to God, it is also away from the World which is poison to the spirit. A Christian must let the Holy Ghost till the soil of their heart in order to receive His judgment and deliverance from sin – the deadly scourge that shrivels the fruits in us. The Christian must allow God to cut them off from the wisdom of the World and become isolated from the sin and weight that “so easily besets us”. This means the Bride will not believe in or believe the doctrines of the World. She will forsake her worldly judgment, not lean to her own understanding, but trust the Holy Ghost to be her guide and to be her voice. Those who hear the Word of God and do it are the true family of Christ.

The dresser also promised to “dung” the tree. He said, in essence, that he would feed it. We too must realize that a primary process in the cultivation of separation is fertilization. Manure is required. To us it may not be the most pleasant of processes. It may even be odious. This is the trusting of the Holy Ghost to judge us of our sin, to give us the foul smell of ourselves and our sinful fruits and to feed us with the Truth. How repugnant is the dunging process compared to the sweet smell of the fruits of the Spirit which are afterward produced. We must accept this offensive procedure if the fruits are to take hold and overpower the smell of our sin. We are not favored or understood in the World when this process of “dunging” in us, or in others we are ministering to, is underway. It naturally separates us from the World. We must accept this separation and the persecution which follows.

The cultivation of the fruits exacts a price sometimes hard to bear. It demands faith and a willingness to allow the Great Gardener to divorce us from the world, to dig around us and make us unpleasant to those about us. But when the fruits begin to grow it makes our painful separation from old familiar worlds all worth it. First, the blossoms come forth with an aroma of beauty and then the much-awaited fruits are ready to be harvested by God for use and consumption at His table for His household.